You are here. (and there)

A scent caught me recently — faint, but familiar. It landed before I could place it.

My heart remembered before my mind did.

Tomatoes fresh off the vine.

Heat.

Loneliness.

My grandmother’s garden.

Time folding in on itself.

There’s the scent I wear — Ffern — seasonal, fleeting.

It lists saffron, bitter orange rind, and jasmine sambac — but I don’t smell those.

I smell time. Disguised as memory. Disguised as me.

Our senses aren’t just receivers — they’re triggers.

They pull us off course — into another season, another self.

That’s what a portal does.

And I think we enter them more than we notice.

Music is one of mine.

A time machine with a backbeat.

I hear Moonshadow and I'm 9 again, watching my mother play jacks.

Since I Left You lands me beside my son Oliver at 17 — our family DJ, all curiosity and charge.. 

When Flashlight comes on the radio, it's 1977 and I’m barefoot on the living room floor, falling in love with funk.

Some sounds don’t just move me — they remake me.

Design does that, too — though not always visually.

It’s more of a feeling. Something instantly understood. A doorway. A return.

A typeface can carry tension or whimsy.

A color can conjure a forgotten summer.

A website — when crafted well — can feel like an open door, leading to a space both new and familiar.

Design travels — from the eye, to the body, to the part of you that remembers.

What are your portals?

What scents, sounds, or objects bring you back — or forward into who you're becoming?

They’re not distractions.

They’re clues.

They’re you, encoded.

What begins as a scent, a sound, a sunlit memory — it isn’t separate from your work. It is the work.

This is the quiet truth of design: Memory, emotion, and the body aren’t just inspiration — they’re the raw material.

Let what cracks you open guide what you create.

Listen to the sounds that helped shape this story:

• Moonshadow by Cat Stevens, 1975

• Since I Left You by The Avalanches, 2000  • Flashlight by Parliament, 1977

Scent by Ffern: Discover Ffern

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If this resonates, I'd love it if you shared it with one person who might feel the same. –S